Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This motion is important because it speaks to the heart of what this government is about. It's not about empowering the people in this room. It's not about empowering the people who are in Canberra. It's actually about empowering people, individuals, families and communities, as the foundation for this great nation.

It's a disappointment that the member for Fremantle is running out of the Federation Chamber, because there is nothing I would enjoy more than responding to his fine address—not least because he says that tax cuts are the only objective of this government. In fact, he criticised the outstanding member who moved this motion, and he suggested that it is the only substance of this government. Clearly the member for Fremantle did not sit through the Governor-General's address at the start of this parliament. It went for about 30 minutes. Don't get me wrong, Member for Fremantle: I love tax reform so much I could talk about it for half an hour. But I concede that that was not the only substantial point. The government has an extensive program focused on infrastructure, supporting people with mental health issues and doing all sorts of things—meeting the expectations of Australians with record funding in health, in education and for the sorts of support services Australians want their government to deliver.

But why can this government deliver it? The reason is simple. The reason we can deliver it is that we're running a strong budget framework, a budget surplus, which they love to neglect. One of their members referred to it as a vanity project. That is the nature and the objective of this Labor Party, this opposition. They see prudent, responsible budget management as a vanity project of the nation rather than the core of what we should have as part of our budget framework so we can deliver for the Australian people.

But we should not underestimate the power and the capacity of what these tax cuts can do. As the mover of the motion rightly adds, it goes to the core of what this government is about: the opportunity for people to be successful. It means that more money will sit in people's pockets. It means they'll be empowered, because it's not just dollars and cents; it's power in people's lives to make choices in the best interests of themselves, their families and their communities.

When the earlier speaker, the member for Fremantle, went on about how there's no stimulus, he must have missed the low- and middle-income tax offsets that were passed by this parliament, which, last I recall, he voted against. They only voted for it in the Senate, but they like to selectively forget that fact. You agree with it in principle, but, when it came down to it, which side of the chamber were you sitting on? We remember, and it wasn't the right side of chamber or the right side of history. What that money is going towards is stimulating the economy to make sure that people have more money in their pockets so they can support their local small businesses, support their communities and support growth, because we understand how critical this is to the success of our nation.

That is the one thing that has always plagued and plaqued the minds of our opponents: they see the success of the nation not through the success of Australians but through the success of themselves. That is one of the fundamental problems that sit at the heart of who they are and why the Australian people so resoundingly rejected them. While they stand here and now lecture us about how allegedly we're not bringing tax cuts along fast enough, they want the collective memory of the nation to forget the $387 billion of tax increases that they took to the election, which they said they thought was necessary for the success of the country and the foundation of the future success of Australians, to fund all the programs they would love to see—$387 billion. It is a scar on the legacy of an opposition that may once have felt that there was some sort of dignity in encouraging people and empowering individuals to live their lives. They were discarding the very legacy of the Hawke-Keating government that they so love to invoke when they seek to inspire their agenda. But they don't believe it. They talk it and they advocate it, but they don't live it. Their only agenda is to hit the hip pockets of Australians, because they think they know better.

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